You know the story: one minute you are talking to an estate agent, the next there are couples trooping through your house turning their nose up at your soft furnishings.

It is a persuasive market at the moment if you are a borderline seller. Most home-owning Londoners who sat on the hands after the crash of 2008 really don’t know what their bricks and mortar are worth after the latest spurt. All the evidence suggests that the 10 per cent rise in the capital’s house prices in the year to July, as measured by the Office for National Statistics, has extended itself in the two months since, as the market gets hotter.

Of course, it’s irrelevant if you have to live in London and the equity has to be recycled into another home. Only those upping sticks to a distant node on a rail link into Waterloo can really turn a profit.

But what is happening in the leafy corners of Putney and Highgate is indicative of a bigger property game being played out across London’s most famous streets.

For every four-bed townhouse in reach of good schools that is being bid up beyond the asking price, buyers are also competing for offices, hotels and prime retail. The bubble that politicians and economists are worried about inflating in housing shows little sign of popping in property’s commercial sphere.

Cash looking for a home in bricks and mortar can bubble over to good effect. It might even act as a catalyst for further regeneration

Spurred on by the eurozone crisis, foreign money seeking a safe haven flooded into London. It has continued to do so. Greek and Italian cash has been followed by Taiwanese and Korean. Every family office needs some exposure to London property, regarded these days as reliable as gold bullion or Swiss francs and a core part of a balanced investment portfolio. Some of that money flows into residential property, but much more is earmarked for commercial opportunities.

In truth, the capital’s property scene is full of tribes that haven’t changed much for decades. Cadogan Estates owns a chunk of Chelsea and Knightsbridge, while Paul Raymond’s heirs control Soho. Many of the attendees from the industry at tonight’s Evening Standard Power 1000 event will be the usual suspects.

But there is evidence that the clamour for a slice of London has forced UK owners to sell up and bank big returns in the face of this wall of cash.

There are plenty of examples of London’s renewed global pull across town, from the Singaporeans lining up to grab a half-share in Broadgate, to the consortium that is quietly piecing together down-at-heel Queensway with the hope of turning it into the next Marylebone High Street.

It was ever thus, and many projects wouldn’t have got off the ground without the foreign shilling, such as the ambitious plan to regenerate Battersea Power Station by Malaysian investors SP Setia and Sime Darby, and Spanish financier Rafael Serrano’s revamp of Admiralty Arch as a luxury hotel.

But property agents making hay are starting to ask quietly: “What happens when these super-prime assets have been sold?” It’s true: landmark buildings are now owned by a United Nations of investors, just like the melting pot of citizens who walk beneath. The Chinese bought the Lloyd’s building; the Qataris added the Inter-Continental hotel freehold on Park Lane to a portfolio that includes Harrods. They are the kind of backers who buy with a decades-long horizon, and rarely do a quick flip.

What has happened is like the Wimbledon effect for financial services, where the Square Mile plays host to the action but rarely rears the best players.

Or the internationalising of the FTSE 100, whose many familiar constituents were bought out in the years of cheap debt by foreign predators, only to be replaced by Kazakh and Mexican mining companies.

The simple answer to addressing the super-prime supply problem is: build more. The more practical answer is that all but the top trophy assets will continue to trade.

The foreign influx makes it harder for domestic property investors to compete. They either have to be bold, like Land Securities’ makeover of Victoria, or canny, like Derwent London, which was quick to spot new districts emerging along the Crossrail route.

Some property agents say a domestic squeeze in commercial property is overblown, with fund managers happier to make a steadier return and good yield outside the capital.

More interestingly, what happens when even the foreign investors regard London’s property gems as too hot to handle? Overseas cash is already finding a home elsewhere in the UK. The Norwegian fund that partnered with the Crown Estate on Regent Street discovered the delights of Yorkshire when it bought a stake in the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield. More money will flow up the M1 or M6.

What it means is that if commercial property is experiencing its own bubble, there is a safety valve in the form of the English regions, Scotland and Wales. Cash looking for a home in bricks and mortar can bubble over to good effect. It might even act as a catalyst for further regeneration.

Several economic indicators suggest that business activity in the capital has led Britain out of recession, including the City, where banking bonuses will be higher this year and insurers and accountants are having a good time of it too.

The property market is no different. The heating up of housing spells grim news for those looking to get on the ladder in London. A City commuter can hardly up sticks and move to Birmingham in order to get a smaller mortgage on their home.

But foreign investors are more mobile than that. Once again, the pull of London can be used to benefit the whole country. There is much written about how property will be death of us, but not if it acts as a magnet for such broad-based investment.